Impromptu in minor
by Thessaly
Summary: Name of the Wind He was so busy chasing her that he didn't notice the other people. Kvothe considers the possibility of a new point of view.


Devin Chronicler ran his eyes over his neat handwriting, checking moments where his pen faltered, his handwriting changed. Across the table, Bast's black eyes followed, suspicious. When the door banged, they both jumped. Even Kvothe looked up from his silent work at the bar.

They were all, privately, expecting more villagers with tales of demons, but instead of was a tall woman with yellow hair and a traveler's pack. She wore trousers and well-worn boots, a jaunty hat over one eye and a vest of some gaudy brocade. She glanced around the inn, then walked over to the table and dropped her pack. "Quiet night, is it?"

"It's been dangerous on the roads," said Bast.

"Isn't it always," she said lightly. "May I join you?"

Chronicler and Bast glanced at each other. "As you like," said Bast.

"Thanks." She sat down and stretched out long legs, yawning. "I've been walking since Tarbean and I hurt all over now."

Bast had been eyeing her pack. "Are you a musician?"

Something skated across her face and vanished quickly. "Nothing special. I can play a dance on a pennywhistle or beat time with a tamborine. Enough."

"Enough?" Chronicler asked intrigued. Perhaps because it was yet more music after a day full of it that he added, "Surely for a true musician there's never enough?"

She had pulled out the pennywhistle from the edge of her pack and, when she looked at the Chronicler, he caught another, stronger glimpse of that flash of whatever-it-was. "True indeed, sir. It's not for lack of trying, believe me. I have simply grown to understand that performance is not, and you'll pardon the joke, my forte." She winked at Chronicler. "I would have liked to have been born a Traveler and grow up immersed in performance but that fate, alas, was not allotted to me. I sell music," she added. "Broadsheets, mostly, but I have tunes and chord patterns. I carry things like lute strings as well, should people need them."

"Do you play the lute?"

"Devin…" Bast groaned. The bartender's grasp slipped and there was a muted clunk from behind the bar.

"I do not." She stood up and pulled out a few jots. "May I buy you gentlemen a small and relatively cheap drink?" Chronicler accepted, Bast declined, and the woman loped over to the bar. "Beer for the fair gentleman and cherry wine for me."

When she returned to the table, Chronicler noticed that her drink was a tawny gold instead of red. "What are you drinking?"

"Apple brandy cut with cider," she said. "Your very good health, sir."

"Devin," he said. "And yours – "

"Pavane."

"Pavane," he echoed. After Devin's gulp of beer and Pavane's long draft of whatever dangerous brew she had in her glass he said, "But didn't you order – ?"

"Oh, he knows what I drink," she said.

"You know our barman?" Bast sounded suspicious.

"Certainly. Hard to forget and lord, didn't my father move heaven and earth to keep him in court with us instead of out destroying things." She winked at Bast this time again. "_No one_ forgets Kvothe Kingkiller after the first introduction."

"You must be mistaken."

"Bast," said a quiet voice. Bast jumped. "Leave it. Pavane Ellem's daughter is a born meddler."

Kvothe sat in one of the chairs as Bast, mutely, moved his over. "You sell music?"

Pavane sighed. "I do. When I was much younger – seventeen or thereabouts – I had ambitions of playing at the Duke's court in the mountains, for my father. But one day a man strolled in with a lute and set the air on fire and that was the end of it; there's some music that makes you realize when to quit while you're ahead."

"You weren't that bad."

"Nor was I that _good_," she said tiredly. "Don't try – I did it all with my father years ago. But not all of us are lucky enough to do great deeds when we _do_ decide to leave safety." She gave the man across the table a crooked smile and turned the conversation adroitly to other news.

Later, when Devin and Bast had vanished for the night, Pavane idled at her table copying out another balled. She leaned back, humming the tune to check it. Someone after the first line, a baritone joined her. Pavane sung better than she played but she knew perfectly well that her voice was merely true and pleasing, while her partner's was _good_. She dropped out, listening to the velvety shades of the voice behind her. The yearning that had swamped her at seventeen welled up from where she thought she had banished it and she shut her eyes to block out the voice, now singing the verses with words and little ornaments and variations. When he stopped, she stayed still a few moments longer, then opened her eyes and said, "Well, teacher, have I made any mistakes?"

"No."

"Thank goodness for that."

"You wouldn't make mistakes anyway, not with Ellem of the Mountains training you."

"True enough, I suppose."

Kvothe stumped over to the bar and returned with another glass over her apple brandy. "You haven't given up singing?"

"I do it when the job calls for it." She shook her head. "I'll never be my father. Or you, for that matter. They still tell stories about your Sir Savian."

He laughed, bitterly. "I imagine they do. But then, they tell a lot of stories."

"Some of them are true. The Savian you gave us that night was true."

He glanced up at her and yielded to the nostalgia. "My Battle of Werdinmine was better."

Pavane shook her head in memory. "Oh, what a horrible little thing I was to demand you play _that_. You were very tactful in restraining me from Sir Savian – I would have botched it in minutes."

"Pavane Ellem's Daugher," said Kvothe in exasperation, "do you have no regard for your talent? You sang a very nice Werdinmine and I have met, in all my days, only one woman who could sing an Alina to my Savian. And besides," he added absently, "a contralto has no business with Alina."

"No," she said, dropping her eyes to the table. "Contraltos so rarely get a great love like that."

"Probably a fault of the ballads," said Kvothe. He looked at her, then reached a hand across the table to touch hers, draw her attention back. "What did you do, when I left?"

"I cried for several days, as I remember, and then I told my father I'd never play my lute again. He didn't believe me."

"And?"

"I threw it at him." Pavane's crooked smile peeked out the corner of her mouth. "I was done with music. First I tried being married."

"That was when I met you in Tarbean, wasn't it? You seemed happy."

"I was, for the most part, but not so much I'd do it again. My son's a musician," she added. "Nice tenor and a demon's own fingers for allegro. He apprenticed to my father when he was eight." She took a mouthful of cider. "I left home after my husband died – threw more things at my father and ran like hell, never to return. It was as though I couldn't stay still without good, solid, tone-deaf Geoffrey to balance me."

"Your poor father, to see his daughter a wanderer."

"And I am too. No great stories, no great romances." Her fingers, stubby with dirt under the cropped nails, closed around his long ones. "I think you took all my music when you went."

He looked at her and for a vertiginous moment, her face wavered into a heart-twisting pale heart with great dark eyes and a mischievious mouth. Then she was Pavane, tanned and aged a good ten years since he'd seen her last, with a large nose and winging brows and a very unexpected dimple. "I never meant to."

"Of course you didn't. I suppose I gave it to you when I left my chamber door unlocked," said Pavane. The undercurrent of tiredness was back. "And it was gone for good the minute you picked up my lute."

It had been, he remembered now, three in the morning and he was young and giddy – who would not be, enjoying a passing romance with the pretty, inviting daughter of a famous musician – and he sat cross legged in front of the fire in only his trousers and played her Traveler's songs for more than an hour. "Oh, no," said Kvothe suddenly, seeing something he recognized in those cheerful hazel eyes.

"You turned sound to gold," said Pavane simply. "The air was alight with it and you left afterimages when you moved. I'd never – I'd never heard anything like it. And then you packed up all that gold and went off the fight myths and romance queens, and I had to stay at court and learn to be the alto – to be mediocre."

He stared at her. "I'm sorry," he said, finally.

Pavane finished her drink. "Don't look so contrite. You're a hero, Kvothe Kingkiller, with magic in your fingers and on your tongue and following in your footsteps. You've been lucky and talented since the day you were born, and when something's offered, you take it without thinking. That's human. And when you're the center of a tale you've even more right to it." She smiled at him and he noticed, because he was trained to look closely, that it was a bit stiff. Then she stood and began rolling broadsheets. "I think I'm off to bed, landlord. Dream of peace."

He stood to face her, now confused more than regretful. "I'm not a hero, Pavane. Just lucky and stupid and arrogant."

She shook her head. "You're a hero. Sell more ballads than all the Kings of the North combined."

"Surely you know the difference between a ballad and the truth."

"I do."

He walked over to her. "Pavane." He paused, then put his arms around her and held her for a few minutes.

Pavane rested her head against the plain tunic. It had been a long time since anyone had held her that gently, or maybe it was that few men had his quiet, resigned calm. Finally she looked up at him. "I loved you, when I was seventeen. I don't know when I grew out of it, but it was a long time. I imagine there were a lot of girls who did, so I'm just taking my special opportunity to tell you."

Kvothe, looking down at her, was mostly green eyes. Out of this burly, taciturn innkeeper, those at least were familiar. A corner of his mouth tipped up in silent amusement. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Pavane, searching the scarred, altered face for the giddy, incandescent young musician she had loved silently and despairingly, could find very little that was the same. She was honestly surprised when the face swooped closer and, very gently, claimed her mouth.

Kvothe gave her a long, searching look when he pulled away. "I would give you your music back if I could, but I seem to have lost mine as well."

Pavane could feel unfamiliar tears prickling behind her eyes. "Now that, Sir Savian, is a tragedy. You may hide your weapons under the bed and let your Sympathy burn itself out in private, but to stop playing – I don't believe it. It comes to you easily as breathing; you told me that once."

"Perhaps I was. That's over though; I'm an innkeeper now, with a list of things I should not have done longer than any of your ballads."

Pavane backed away, looking thoughtful. "I have made my peace with who I am and what I can do, Kvothe Six-String, but you have not. You might want to look into it." She shouldered her pack with a smile and a nod, and went through the door to the rooms. "Good night."

**A/N** _Based on Patrick Rothfuss' "The Name of the Wind" which I am no closer to owning than I am to owning Harry Potter. I think I may be the only one mad enough to write Kvothe fic, but - it happened. It began as an attempt to get around my dislike of Denna on paper, and became something a bit more meditative. Leave me a review if you're read the novel; I know I'm not approximating style well here, but I'm always curious for more opinions on what you thought of the book._


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